This article is a social history regarding the creation and evolution of the state police in Illinois as an archetypal model. The methodology and data collection employed a content analysis of both primary and secondary sources. It is posited that the Illinois State Police is a historical artifact that is the product of: (1) the Progressive agenda and the concomitant police professionalization movement; (2) social, economic and cultural forces at work during the years immediately following the turn of the century; and (3) the desire by entrenched power to control the laboring and unruly classes. Both the evolution of the Illinois State Police and its place within the American scheme of policing are representative of other state-level policing agencies across the nation.